


Changing Lightbulbs

by patrician_lurker



Category: RWBY
Genre: "friends" is too nice to describe Neo and Cardin, Durian Ice Cream, Fluff and Crack, Gen, I'm joking, Roman being Woke ™️ for pragmatic villainy, Villains being friends, some sexist/ableist stuff from Cardin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25803130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrician_lurker/pseuds/patrician_lurker
Summary: An expansion of the RWBY Chibi skit "The Protege".Roman decides to pick up a new stray henchperson, Neo hates tall people, and Cardin gets kicked in the shins. A lot. Also, he's somehow more oblivious than his favorite bully victim. Hilarity ensues?A day in the life of three antagonists, hanging out in their hideout, maybe learning to lik- pfft.Quite possibly the very first fic ever written in this fandom to pair Cardin and Neo, even as just friends!
Relationships: Neopolitan & Cardin Winchester, Neopolitan & Roman Torchwick, Roman Torchwick & Cardin Winchester
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12
Collections: A Day in The Life of





	Changing Lightbulbs

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy what is quite possibly the first (?) Neo and Cardin story in this fandom.

**I. strawberry**

_“Remind me_ who _you are again and_ why _I should care?”_

Neo recalled, with a clarity that rivaled the memory of the day she had discovered the wonders of durian ice cream, the day she met the boy-giant. The boss had decided to go on one of his little walks around the more respectable parts of Vale, reveling in the fearful glances sent their way from concerned citizens who recognized _the_ master criminal. None of them could do _anything_ , knowing full well that Neo could just as easily whisk the boss away if the cops arrived, so Neo was content to just walk at the boss’ side, humoring his rather long-winded monologue on some death trap that would _finally_ help them defeat that pesky Hunts-Man. Oh, how she was looking forward to tangling with that dust-damned _dog…_ until the boy-giant swaggered his way from across the street, ignoring the angry complaints from drivers who were just minding their own business when a hunter-in-training decided to flout all known traffic and pedestrian laws simply to meet one of his personal heroes.

Neo cocked her eyes at the boy-giant in armor, who walked up to the two of them with a confidence that bordered on ignorance, and frowned as the doofus slid up next to the Boss’ side like he was the boss’ left-hand man and introduced himself. The boss didn’t _need_ a left-hand man! Neo was ambidextrous!

 _“My name’s Cardin Winchester. I’m a_ huge _fan of your work. You’re a_ legend _in the bully community.”_

Oh, the boss _liked_ that introduction, as he let out a grin that rivaled the time they figured out how Neo’s semblance worked and the two decided that petty larceny was peanuts compared to what they could do now. Neo, for her part, cast a dismissive glance at her boss, who looked all-too-pleased to have an admirer who also wasn’t trying to kill him and take his place as the most fashionable criminal in Vale. She didn’t share her boss’ sentiments, though.

_He’s humoring strays again!_

It was a particularly nasty habit of her boss, who liked finding strays and taking them in, only to discard them once they had lost their usefulness. Neo had lost many a pet that way, and while she could never truly _resent_ her boss, she could still be annoyed by his antics, the same way Roman was always annoyed at her for, quote-unquote, playing with her food.

So when her boss had asked for her opinion (she knew that the boss had already made up his mind and was simply asking her because she was his partner, dammit, she deserved to have a say in things… metaphorically speaking, of course) her reply was clear and concise: _Ditch him!_ To her boss’ credit, they _did_ ditch him, right after they had just robbed a randomly chosen Dust shop blind and made the boy-giant the patsy. What Neo didn’t expect was the utter naivety of the man, who never did rat out the duo for their complicity in his supposed crime. _That_ made Roman smile, and when he smiled, Neo knew their little hideout was about to receive one new member.

Said new member, incidentally, was meeting with Roman in his office, but Neo didn’t really care about that. The three of them were currently in-between jobs and spent their free time in one of Roman’s many hideouts. Their current hideout, unfortunately, was criminally small, consisting of only three rooms: Roman’s office/sleeping quarters, Neo’s much more spacious bedroom, and a small common room from which the only entrance to their hideout was located. She was lying on the singular piece of furniture in the impromptu living/guest room, a battered black sofa that looked particularly out of place in most settings besides the videos Neo knew Roman watched in private whenever he wasn’t with some random woman he managed to sweet-talk. The room otherwise had no amenities, except for a whiteboard their current employer had installed the last time she had visited with her lackies, Street Rat and Creep With Metal Legs.

Well, _almost_ no amenities: the only source of light was a weak lightbulb whose light would flicker every few seconds or so.

She was idly playing with cashews in a small bowl placed on top of her stomach, digging her fingers deep into the bowl to look for particularly tough nuts to crack. Once she found one, she cast her eyes to the faintly flickering lightbulb on the ceiling, and, with a swift motion, tossed her chosen cashew at the light bulb. The nut made a ‘thunk’ sound before bouncing harmlessly against the bulb and dropping to the floor below to join a growing pile of cashew nuts on the floor below. Regrettably, the bulb remained unmoved.

“Neo! Did you change the lightbulb yet? I can barely see in there!” Her boss screamed from his office.

 _I’m trying!_ She wanted to reply, but instead she began digging for more cashews.

\---0--- **.**

**II. chocolate**

Cardin Winchester shifted uncomfortably in his seat, watching his new boss thumb through some paperwork on his desk.

When his father suggested he seek out an internship for the semester break, he didn’t think it would be this… painful! The room was making him feel claustrophobic, between the cramped space (Cardin was confident he could reach the ceiling with his hands in just one strong jump if he wanted) and the fact that his back was _literally_ against the wall. Roman Torchwick’s office felt more like a broom closet than a proper office to conduct his business in, and the fact that Roman insisted on setting up an ostentatious desk inside the broom closet/supposed office and hog most of the available leg room didn’t help matters. When Cardin entered the room, the door bounced _hard_ against Roman’s desk, dislodging many of Roman’s papers and the music box that Roman used as a paperweight. Cardin wasn’t sure what to make of Roman’s choice in… paraphernalia but chose to hold his tongue. The last thing he wanted to do was annoy his new boss. He knew he was on thin ice already, considering Roman didn’t even bother offering him a seat and instead told him to lean against the corner wall.

“Right. Karen, was it?”

“It’s Cardin, actually.”

“Right, Karen. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure why you asked for a meeting when you’re just a week into this… partnership,” Roman began, spreading his arms out as he sat on his swivel chair, his legs on top of his desk. “Usually the hired help doesn’t get uppity until they, you know, actually participate in a _successful job_.”

“I just… wanted to ask a few questions,” Cardin replied, measuring his words slowly. He recalled a brief lesson from leadership class about diplomacy, one he admittedly only paid attention to because _damn_ Glynda was looking finer than usual that day. When dealing with unfavorable positions in negotiation (wording that made Cardin _rise up in attention_ ), a suggestion was to try and engage the other party in small talk to lower their guard.

So Cardin opened with a joke. “So, uh, why’s the room so small?”

The moment the words escaped his lips, Cardin regretted it immediately.

“Neo wants the bigger room,” Roman spat out like it was the most obvious thing in the world, “and Neo gets what she wants. You haven’t figured that out yet? You’ve been interning for a week now.”

“…right. Look, no offense boss, but I really don’t like spending time with the crazy psychotic midg-“

Before Cardin could finish his sentence, Roman took out Melodic Cudgel and bopped Cardin on the head a couple of times before poking his chest with the cane.

“Kid, I find you hilarious, so here’s some free advice: try not to throw out all that ableist crap around Neo and our employers.” Roman placed Melodic Cudgel on the desk before opening a hidden drawer. As he was rummaging through his drawer, he added, “We’re working with cra- extremely passionate people right now. You don’t want to set them off.”

He stopped for a second to finally grab what he was rummaging for, which turned out to be his favorite brand of cigars. “Also, you have no idea how useful little people are when pulling cons on the rich and elderly. _Seriously_ , it’s like people fall over themselves to look nice in front of the buggers. So try not to make fun of ‘em, some of my best friends are little people.”

“Besides, Neo’s your age,” Roman continued, before he stopped to consider the validity of his statement. After a few moments of thinking about it, he added, “probably. Eh, close enough. Hell if I know how old she was when I picked her up, but just because she’s short doesn’t mean she’s, you know, stunted in growth. She’s pretty much an adult now, if a little on the short side, and the ID I got for her proves it. Blame my bad dietary choices if she doesn’t look like it, not something she was born with.”

Roman sounded genuinely contrite at that one, Cardin observed, but he said nothing. Roman, for his part, motioned to Cardin, seemingly offering one of his cigars to the giant teen, to which Cardin shook his head vigorously. Roman smiled at Cardin’s refusal.

“Good, because I would have hit you again if you actually accepted. At least you’re learning _something,_ ” Roman offered, lighting his cigar. “If only you could channel that big brain of yours into anything besides being a gofer.”

Cardin flinched a little as Roman begun releasing small puffs of smoke from his cigar, observing that Roman was taking great delight in blowing as much smoke as possible in Cardin’s face. _He knows I’m asthmatic!_ Cardin grouched, but he held his tongue, recalling the lessons in leadership he had somehow managed to retain. In a negotiation scenario, you held your cards close to the chest. _Don’t let him notice you’re about to cough, don’t let him notice you’re about to cough, don’t let him notice you’re about to cough…_

He coughed.

_Dammit!_

Roman chuckled at the display of weakness. “I’m _so_ sorry. I didn’t realize you couldn’t stand cigar smoke, kiddo. Want me to open up a window, dear?”

“Sure, that would be goo-“

His reward was another bop on the head.

“ _Neo’s_ room has the windows, Tiny. Try to keep up, will you?”

If Cardin had known that he was going to intern with someone who berated him at every step of the way while not actually educating him on what he was _supposed_ to do _,_ he would have stayed with his father. Unfortunately, he had made his bed that fateful day he decided to approach the master criminal, aware of his reputation both from the news and from his father’s own dealings with the man. He had assumed, at first, that Roman accepted him because of the Winchester name, but Roman either _didn’t care_ or paid more attention to the fact that he didn’t rat out the two to the police when they… “liberated” him.

(Cardin didn’t have the heart to tell them that he was waiting for the family lawyer to arrive and smooth over the proceedings, perhaps negotiate a plea bargain or an arrangement to turn over the two criminals.)

When his father learned about what had befallen Cardin, the decision was immediate: Cardin was to stick with the duo, who seemed to have taken a shine to him. Well, Roman seemed to, although Cardin felt sometimes that Roman had taken a shine to him the same way his mother took a shine to the various gardeners and pool boys that tended to the Winchester estate, meaning that once they got bored, he was out on his ass in the streets. Roman was all too happy to accept him as one of his associates, citing his drastically reduced asking price (the whopping price of 0 lien and recommendation letters, which meant jack shit to anyone besides less-than-legal acquaintances anyway) compared to Roman’s usual henchmen.

Neo, though… Neo was a problem.

“Look, it’s about the midg- shortstack.” Cardin began to explain. “I get that she’s a big deal for this organization, but I feel like she’s not treating me like an associate. I’m technically the third highest in the hierarchy here!”

Roman rolled his eyes. “There’s only three of us here, bird boy.”

“You know what I mean! She’s your henchman! At least get her to stop hitting me in the shins every time I run into her!”

“First things first, Mr. Winchester, don’t let other people hear you call Neo my _henchman_. That’s sexist. Use _henchperson_ instead.” Roman placed extra emphasis on the last part of the word. “It’s hard to work with the unions unless you use the proper terminology in the field. They’re very fidgety about the topic of equal representation, as well as reducing the wage gap between henchmen and henchwomen. The last thing I want is for our little organization to come across as politically incorrect.”

Cardin nodded, honestly dumbfounded by all this new information. Who knew there was so much politics in doing crime?

“Honestly, I’d care more about this crap if they got results,” Roman grumbled under his breath, before continuing. “Also, unless you want the, ahem, _shortstack_ to tear your rich little behind a new one, I wouldn’t call her that, or imply that she’s just one of the hired help. That’s discriminatory.”

“You were calling those White Fang terrorists we were working with the other day animals!”

“Yes, but those Faunus aren’t allowed to unionize and their legal rights in Vale are a joke, both because they’re Faunus and because they’re wanted terrorists. Besides, make them feel a little bit of righteous indignation and their productivity rises.”

 _That_ certainly made sense to Cardin, and it was a lesson his father so dearly tried to impart on him. Hell, wasn’t that why he was messing with the bunny girl and Jauney boy?

 _Well, used to, anyway_ , Cardin thought, recalling the incident in Forever Fall. Frankly, he felt that his community service recently was lacking, as for some inexplicable reason all his charges started developing backbones faster than he had anticipated. Jauney boy grew a backbone and the bunny turned out to be a second year, and _that_ wasn’t a fun revelation to handle…

His father always stressed that it took time for the weak and the minorities to find the strength to try and overthrow their superiors, and that you could squeeze the most productivity out of them by keeping them perpetually in a state of near-revolt but never allowing them to _actually_ go through with it. Roman seemed to subscribe to the same idea, which was why Cardin continued to follow Roman and his crazy side chick even if said chick kept kicking him in the shins and hitting her with that dust-damned frilly umbrella of hers like he was a goddamn pet.

“Yeah, well, look. I need advice on how to deal with your sidekick. Every time I run into her, she just keeps trying to kick me in the shins until I’m down on the floor. I didn’t even _do_ anything to her!” Cardin expressed, doing his best not to raise his pitch into whiny levels. “I don’t want to just sit in the hideout doing secretary bullshit, especially if she’s going to keep hitting me from behind or randomly assaulting me in the middle of cleaning her room! When I ask her why she just shrugs and grins! She never even talks or initiates conversation!”

“Yes, well, I can’t trust you to join us in the field until you can manage a little roughhousing from Neo,” Roman fired back, “…and frankly, while I still find you hilarious, you’re not exactly showing off any observational skills here. It’s like all you’re good for is dumb muscle, and I already have Neo for that, except she’s not dumb.”

“Well, what am I doing wrong, then?” Cardin, now fed up with Roman’s evasiveness, uttered in a whiny voice that would make Jauney boy proud. He chose to ignore the jab at his intelligence.

Cardin watched as Roman sighed, scratching the back of his ears as he chucked the rest of his cigar onto the overcrowded ashtray on his desk. The room was now heavy with cigar smoke, and Cardin was finding it increasingly hard to breathe. Roman, meanwhile, was unperturbed, and started talking, first to himself. “I need to hire a goddamn Human Resources person for this kind of nonsense… but _nooo_ , we don’t have anyone available for your _specific_ needs, Mr. Torchwick.” Roman grumbled again as he sorted through the mess of paperwork in his office, stopping when he spotted a stray piece of paper that had almost fallen off his desk.

“Alright, kid, might as well give you a performance evaluation. You Beacon brats are into that kind of stuff, right? Peer reviews and crap.”

“Well, yeah, all teams are expected to conduct regular peer reviews. Me and the boys do it every other week.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you and your boys peer review each other regularly,” Roman immediately threw out, before pausing to consider his words. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” He was _not_ getting in trouble for that comment…

Cardin adjusted his posture, eager to receive proper feedback for once from his boss.

“Right, so, do you remember the first time Neo instigated an attack on you?”

“Yeah, I walked into this hideout the day I officially signed up and she let me in. We looked at each other before she suddenly kicks me right in the balls.”

“Do you remember what happened when you looked at each other?”

“Not really.”

“…what were you looking at?”

“Huh? What do you mean? I was checking her out.”

“Uh-huh.” Roman snorted.

“Yeah, I was thinking, damn, for such a tiny little chick, she sure has a nice ra-“

Roman bopped Cardin for the third time. He added a little oomph, hitting Cardin on the soft, squishy parts of his head.

“Try not to use that language around here. She’s my employee, I don’t want to be slapped with harassment suits, _and_ she’s kind of my adopted niece. I’m legally and morally obligated to beat you up for that.”

Cardin rubbed his head, wondering what he had done to deserve getting hit _three times_ by the dust-damned cane. “You don’t have to keep hitting me! Just tell me if I’m doing something wrong!”

“Sorry, kid. I’ve heard all the rhetoric about abuse and parents using violence on their kids, but I’m a _criminal_. We’re kind of terrible people, except I have a brand I have to live up to.” Roman was still reclining on his chair, his hands now behind his head as he looked at Cardin with a disgusted look on his face. “This is all I know about parenting and management. I’d try to rein in Neo if she goes too far but brothers know she’d beat me up in a fight.”

Cardin didn’t have a response to that, so he just nodded. Roman continued.

“Look… just tell me. What color were Neo’s eyes?”

“Huh?” Cardin tilted his head. “Neo’s… eyes?”

“Yes, Mace Boy, her eyes. What color were they?”

“Hell if I know. Does it matter?”

“And somehow you haven’t figured out why Neo hates you?”

“That doesn’t say anything!”

“I’m not interested in spelling it out for you, since I’m not being paid to play HR.” Roman drawled on, now bored by this conversation. “Just… one piece of advice, kid. Try to look her in the eye next time, maybe pay attention to her, because at this rate I’ll end up dropping your ass and Neo won’t take pity on you.”

“Wait, wha-”

“Now go away, I need a nap, my nighttime entertainment last night was particularly intense.” Roman shooed Cardin away with his hands, before shouting at the girl in the other room. “Neo! Did you change the lightbulb yet? I can barely see in there!”

\---0---

**III. vanilla**

The cashew pile finally collapsed after Neo had exhausted her small bowl of nuts. It was a shame, too, since the last one she tossed seemed to have had a faint effect on the lightbulb, which was still flickering away, taunting her with promises of stable light, only to plunge the living room in darkness every few seconds or so. Neo could have _sworn_ the bulb was starting to loosen, but like many things in life, all her efforts were in vain. Like the strays Roman kept discarding, even if Neo did her best to keep them around.

The first stray that Neo could remember was a mousy little thing who skittered around and refused to be touched or comforted. Neo had tried feeding the poor stray for the first two days but got tired when the stray refused to look Neo in the eye, so Neo shrugged and let Roman do whatever he felt like doing.

Despite that initial first encounter, the boss insisted on bringing in new strays, reasoning that Neo “needed companions”, but Neo never saw the point. She had the boss, didn’t she? The boss taught her all she needed to know, and that was enough for Neo. Sure, the boss sucked at teaching her combat (his most common phrase for Neo was to stop playing with her food, which made no sense to Neo, because food was something you _played_ with, right?) but otherwise his teachings were solid, like the time he taught her how to steal things from a mark without them noticing, or the impromptu advice she received during a bungled heist on how to get men to lower their guards around her, or, the most important of lesson of all, how she should never trust people who didn’t look you in the eye.

Neo recalled the moment the boss taught her that lesson with a clarity that rivaled the memory she had unlocked her semblance and proved to Roman that she was worth keeping around (although the boss had sworn she didn’t _need_ to unlock her semblance, Neo knew better). The words rang in her head, bouncing around the confines of her skull like echoes that refused to fade away with time.

“ _Well, damn, kid, those are some freaky looking eyes._ ”

When Neo looked the boss in the eye, all she initially saw was a freakishly tall man in a dirty white suit and a top hat that was in desperate need of repair. (In Neo’s defense, most people were freakishly tall.) But the boss was different because despite the harsh words he spat out, he offered her a hand and literally took her off the streets. It was a far better experience, Neo felt, than everyone else who looked at her eyes and uttered trite phrases offering pity, while all she could see in their eyes were horror, disgust, or worst of all, _sympathy_.

Speaking of disgusting things, the boy-giant ambled out of the boss’ room with the look of sheer confusion after the little talk he had with the boss. Neo didn’t care, fully expecting the boy-giant to use his dust-damned height to either ignore her presence or look down her shirt, both of which were disagreeable to the boss’ right and left hand person (self-proclaimed). Instead, she chose to remain lying on the sofa, staring at the lightbulb at the ceiling and the soft, flickering lights.

“Why the fuck are cashews scattered on the- you know what, never mind. Hey, uh, Neo?” The boy-giant began, surprising Neo that he even remembered her name. She had expected the armored giant to ignore her like he always did when she tried to initiate eye contact ( _why does he have to be so dust-damned tall?! It hurts my neck just to look at him! My head barely reaches up to his chest!_ ) but was now trying to initiate conversation. That was good, Neo thought, considering it was rather hard for her to start any kind of conversation in the first place.

Neo glanced at the boy-giant, noticing the slight wince on Bird boy’s face, most likely remembering the time Neo tried to make the doofus pay attention to _her_ instead of looking down on her (and sneaking glances). At the very least, physical pain worked to teach him to stop doing that. Maybe he really _was_ a pet, if corporal punishment worked on him, Neo thought.

“Look, Torchwick kind of, uh, implied some things…” The giant began to explain, and Neo was fully prepared to ignore him, aware of how few of the giant’s words really mattered except for the beginning and the end, but instead, she got up from her reverie and sat cross-legged on the sofa to establish eye contact with the mace wielder. Unfortunately, it hurt her neck to try and look up to his face, so she settled on staring at his chest piece instead, wondering what possessed the boy-giant to have a stupid bird painted on his chest plate.

“…so I was wondering if there was anything I could do to get you to put a good word in for me.” Bird boy concluded. “Torchwick’s hinting that I’d be sacked soon if I don’t start pulling my weight around here, and I really _would_ like some field experience. My dad’s getting on my case too about not actually _doing_ anything but crap he says should be left to the secretaries.”

Neo had only listened to half of what the giant was talking about, but the detail about his dad caught her attention. Neo wasn’t any stranger to daddy issues and trying to appease father figures. But gods, why was it so hard to look up at him?

Neo briefly considered standing on top of the sofa ( _maybe that way we’d see eye to eye_ ) but decided against it, as the sofa was _really_ comfortable to sit on, despite its questionable appearance. Instead, she shrugged and pointed around the room.

“Look, I won’t get what you want to say if you don’t talk.” 

Neo, now annoyed, activated her semblance, tapping her foot against the edge of the sofa, and to the armored giant’s eyes, she must have looked like she shattered into a million glass pieces. Instead, she stood up and made her way behind the giant. Mustering all her strength, she aimed her right leg at the back of the boy-giant’s right knee and _kicked_ , forcing the giant to stumble and fall on the injured knee.

“Ow! What the fuck, you crazy psycho bitch!”

Neo giggled a little as the giant fell, enjoying the rare sight of being almost level with him. For his part, the Beacon student let out a string of expletives that Neo ignored. She walked around the groaning boy, lifting her hands to cup the boy-giant’s face, finally allowing her to look him straight in the eyes.

The giant’s first reaction was one of confusion, and Neo noted the way his eyes darted for a second elsewhere before recognition shone in his face and he directed his gaze at Neo’s face, specifically her eyes. Neo had learned the word _heterochromia_ from a doctor that the boss dragged her to when she was younger, but even that word didn’t seem to capture the way her eyes shifted in color every few seconds like a flickering lightbulb. Upon learning this, Neo had decided that if people were going to look at her strangely just for her eyes that she may as well lean into it and make people uncomfortable, explaining her current look.

(It was a convenient way to evaluate people too, because Neo knew not to trust people who claimed one thing while their eyes betrayed their sympathies and disgust.)

Now that she could look at him properly in the eyes, and not just berating him for either ignoring her or trying to look at her cleavage, something clicked in Neo, and she felt her mouth contort into a cocky grin, something that the _oh-so-observant_ giant failed to noticed. Instead, he opened his big dumb stupid mouth.

“The heck did Roman make me want to look at your goddamn freaky eyes for?” The boy, Cardin, finally uttered, his tone betraying no sympathy or falsehoods, only pure confusion and a little malice and disgust. “They’re creeping me out. Can’t you stop them from flickering like that?”

Neo’s response was the widest grin she felt she had had in months. In one fluid motion, she flipped over Cardin, her hands on his shoulders for balance. She adjusted herself in mid-air, rotating until she had done a full flip, and proceeded to land on Cardin’s shoulders. 

“Hey, what the-” Cardin began to start, but Neo simply dug her heels into his shoulders. By reflex, Cardin stood up, and Neo used the momentum from Cardin standing up to execute her own jump. Propelled by Cardin’s (unintentional) push, Neo _soared_ through the air, reaching heights she would not have been able to reach on her own, and in an act of dexterity that would have put most to shame, grabbed the flickering lightbulb and replaced it with a new one she was hiding in her _secret_ compartment.

By the time she had landed on the floor, Cardin was grumbling and groaning, having collapsed into the mess of cashews on the floor. Neo walked over to the light switch and flicked it open a couple of times until the new bulb lit up. The room was now significantly brighter than before.

Neo grabbed her umbrella, which was leaning against the door leading outside, before heading over to Cardin, who was getting up with great difficulty. Cardin dragged himself to the now empty sofa to sit down and recover from being Neo’s impromptu trampoline. Meanwhile, she grabbed her scroll and went into the image gallery, settling on a familiar image, before she went in front of Cardin again and shoved the scroll in his face.

“Huh? What? What do you want now?” She heard Cardin mutter, but she ignored that and pointed to the image on her scroll. It was a picture of a frozen yogurt and ice cream shop that she liked in Vale.

“Why can’t you just tell me…” Cardin began to say, but now that he had recovered his bearings well enough, and he was seated, he could finally look at Neo properly. Neo pouted, still tapping at the picture of the shop, and, after a moment of confusion, recognition arose from Cardin’s face.

“Oh. _Oh._ ” Cardin’s face made Neo giggle from how dumb it looked. Most of the strays that Roman took in either looked at Neo in horror, trying to imagine what could have happened to such a seemingly sweet and innocent little girl, or in pity, trying to reassure her that it was going to be okay, that she was still strong enough to survive despite the inability to speak. _Yeah, no_. Neo wasn’t interested in empty platitudes and superficial pity.

Meanwhile, Cardin was looking _disgusted_ , likely realizing how blind and ignorant he must have been to not notice all the obvious signs. _No wonder_ she never talked! Neo could imagine the thoughts in his head: that was how obvious was on his face, and for all the malice and general assholery his eyes displayed, they also didn’t hide any ulterior motives. He was pure dumb muscle, through and through. That was fine for Neo. Better dumb muscle than two-faced liars!

What cemented everything, however, was that Cardin didn’t even bother apologizing, or stammering out anything to make up to her - instead, he began hurling out profanities. “What the fuck?! You can’t talk? Goddamn mute bitch! You mean you made my life difficult all week long because I didn’t notice that?!”

Neo nodded, paused, and then placed her index and middle finger on her eyes, gesturing at them to Cardin, before she pointed the two fingers at Cardin’s eyes.

“What, so everything earlier was so you could look me in the eye?”

“...”

“And all that crap with my shins was so I’d bend down and we’d be at the same height?”

“...”

“And you couldn’t have asked me to replace the lightbulb? You had to go and use me as a goddamn launching pad?”

“...”

“And I assume the picture means you want to go to that stupid froyo shop?”

The disgust on Cardin’s face was palpable, and Neo enjoyed every single moment of it.

“For fuck’s sake. Well, whatever.” Cardin finally sighed in defeat. “Does this mean we’re good now?”

Neo adopted a thinking pose for a moment before shrugging and hooking Cardin’s neck with her umbrella, dragging him along behind her like he was some stray she had picked up from the streets. Cardin’s complaints went ignored entirely.

\---0---

**IV. ice cream**

Roman Torchwick had seen much in his life, but he wasn’t sure what he was looking at now. It was the strangest photo to wake up to, that was for sure.

The photo sent on his scroll was seemingly innocuous – his partner, enjoying that abominable durian ice cream of hers, the spoon in her mouth as she held the phone up to take a selfie. That was common. Neo only really overspent on her ice cream or her appearance, and for some reason, loved bragging about it to Roman as if he cared what she did in her free time. (As long as she wasn’t doing anything stupid!) But the strange thing was that she had dragged the new henchman he decided to pick up on a whim, _and_ they were both in the selfie. The boy had a look of disgust in his face, his own ice cream in his hand, Neo’s arms wrapped tightly around his large, tree-trunk like neck, and Roman could almost smell the damn scent of durian through the phone. But what really confused him was the caption because Neo rarely used captions, preferring to send simple emojis or selfies of her pouting over the written word. Plus Neo rarely, if ever, asked him anything. But here she was, now, making a request.

_Can we keep it?_

Roman sighed. In the next room, the lightbulb was shining brighter than it ever did before.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as part of the The RWBY Nook writing discord’s “A Day in The Life of RWBY” prompt event, with the simple challenge of writing about a day in the life of a RWBY character, utilizing any pairing we want. I decided to go with an expansion of RWBY Chibi’s “The Protégé” skit, which saw Cardin trying to apply for a job with Roman, with Neo hating Cardin’s guts. And, well, things snowballed from there. 
> 
> For anyone looking forward to more group chat shenanigans… I’m working on it? FGO won’t grind itself, you know!


End file.
